How Yolo County launched a national coffee company

Puroast talks about their Woodland roots over coffee

By
Hans Peter, Woodland Daily Democrat

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Tucked away in Woodland’s industrial area, a local coffee company occupies a section of a warehouse that has no sign or banner — just like the product that ships nationwide from its doors, the building relies on subtlety.

With the sturdy scent of roasting beans spilling into the office, Puroast Coffee Company employees filled mugs with the house roast and discussed what made their coffee good. Most wearing jeans, work boots and shirts sporting their logo — a red rooster — they recollected the journey that made their coffee popular on the tongues of those who live in Los Angeles, Florida, New Jersey and beyond.

The beans? The roasting? The nutrition label?

The truth may be a blend of all three, but all in the room agreed: the company may not have grown outside of Yolo County.

Puroast specializes in slow-roasted coffee, a rarity in today’s caffeine-jitter environment of “flash roast” beans. After nearly 12 years of research and development, the company discovered and founded itself within something of a loophole.

“We found a way to industrialize the slow-roast process,” said James Sachs, the company’s co-founder. “We roast like growers do in South and Central America.”

Sachs and his brother started the company and decided to place it in Woodland. Kerry invented their roasting process based on “the Lost Art of Roasting.”

Supposedly, the slow-roast process yielded a smoother, more flavorful product with no bitter aftertaste. Sure enough, Puroast has the numbers — and the flavor to prove it.

Enter Dr. Takayuki Shibamoto, a professor of environmental toxicology at UC Davis who was one of the first researchers to analyze coffee’s benefits like antioxidants. He sniffed out Puroast’s claim to being less acidic than most coffees in 2005, and conducted experiments to seek truth — or falsities — behind the brand.

He found that Puroast was in fact up to 70 percent less acidic than most leading brands, and the roast also had seven times the antioxidants of green tea.

Having passed through Shibamoto’s gauntlet of tests, Puroast’s coffee was rewarded with verifiable numbers that proved both its uniqueness and its easiness on the stomach.

“That was a big part of the success in the beginning,” Sachs said.

Brewing differently

Most people take their coffee with cream or sugar — not statistics.

But that approach, along with strong roots in Woodland and surrounding Yolo County, brought Woodland-roasted beans to faraway filters.

Sachs said the hard facts and numbers supplied by UC Davis have won the stomachs of dietitians nationwide, who seek healthful alterations to daily diets. That allowed them a toe into the coffee industry, and they began to ship and sell in co-op stores and local markets. Through time, they used the same leverage to gain access to the broader coffee market, dictated mostly by Starbucks, Peet’s, Folger’s and other mammoths.

He said their secret method of slow-roasting initially came as a threat to larger coffee companies.

“We’re very much like the Martin Luthers of coffee,” he said, referring to Lutheranism’s schism from the Catholic church in the 1500s. “We had a disruptive idea in a big industry.”

The “revolution” encountered friction, but also gained attention on a larger scale. Amazon sales skyrocketed, bags of Puroast soon found themselves under distribution by Kroger, and on the shelves of Walmart.

Last year, actress Katherine Heigl even boosted Puroast in her blog stating Puroast “tastes great, is far easier on my stomach and mindfully grown and harvested without all the harsh chemicals used at most coffee farms.” She also said the lack of acidity was good for her, especially as she was pregnant at the time.

Woodland roots

Tom Moneymaker, the company’s director of operations, said the numbers and the notoriety of their coffee would be worth very little without the company’s base in Woodland. Though beans derive from Central and South America, they all arrive at their roasting facility here. After roasting, they are distributed from their unlabeled garage door to the rest of America.

“Woodland is the operation, still is,” Moneymaker said. “It’s been a good community to develop a business. I’m surprised more places don’t decide to operate here.”

He explained that Woodland’s location near I-5 and I-80 makes it perfect for shipping a physical product. Nearness to the West Coast means cheaply importing beans.

“Woodland has been a good place for the small market, because it has access to the big market,” Moneymaker said.

But unlike San Francisco and Sacramento, Woodland has cheap properties and easy access to a multitude of industrial services.

“We get all our machining done just down the road,” said Master Roaster Dan Cummings.

He said their process requires machines they build themselves. Parts and services are needed to keep their roasting up to demand.

Despite Puroast’s defiant rise into the behemoth coffee market, the group of men and women responsible for roasting and packaging the beans said they enjoyed the work. Thought it takes time to slow-roast the beans, good things come to those who wait, including a whole new portion of the consumer market.

“A lot of people try our coffee because normal coffee is too acidic,” Sachs explained. “People will tell us ‘now I can drink coffee again.’”